Production firm markets worldwide

If you’re put on hold when calling the Coeur d’Alene Resort, that soothing baritone in your ear urging patience and encouraging you to sample the hotel’s amenities belongs to Steve Sibulsky.

It’s the same voice you heard if you sailed on one of the resort’s Christmas cruises or happened to call a certain perfume shop in London or a shipping broker on Cyprus.

Steve Sibulsky Productions is a one-man firm that, for the past 11 years, has been marketing audio services worldwide from the studio on the ground floor of his Coeur d’Alene home via the Internet. Those services include digital editing, CD recording, production and “voicers.”

“I position myself as the McDonald’s of the audio production world,” he explains. “Our services are straightforward, reasonably priced, and we have a fast turnaround.”

He and his wife, Mary, a surgical nurse, have raised two children, Elisabeth, once a co-salutatorian at Coeur d’Alene High and now a senior at the University of San Diego, and Andrew, a University of Idaho sophomore.

At 55, the Portland native and Spokane-reared audio professional is an ebullient but battle-scarred veteran of the broadcast profession. He majored in radio and television management at Eastern Washington University in the ‘60s, then enlisted in the Army in 1971 to attend the 10-week broadcast journalist course at the Defense Information School, Fort Benjamin Harrison, in Indianapolis.

His graduation assignment was to the American Forces Radio and Television Service station at Misawa Air Base in northern Japan where, for two years, he was the host of a nightly television news show and a weekly radio program.

Following his discharge, he knocked around the Northwest broadcast industry, with two stints at KXLY radio and television in Spokane as a staff announcer and studio technician, at KIOB-FM and KVNI/KKCH Radio in Coeur d’Alene as operations manager, and similar work at stations in Newport, Ore., Tacoma and Great Falls.

Sibulsky says he learned networking – for people and computers – during a brief stint with Agency One in Coeur d’Alene. That was a firm that provided insurance agency management software.

He honed his computer skills, he says, in a part-time job with Coldwater Creek’s inbound call center from 1995 to 2003 where he was a customer service agent and eventually a computer support technician.

That background serves him well, for these days he does his editing and production on computers, working with sound waves projected onto monitors that supplement the sounds emanating from his loudspeakers.

Sibulsky describes a great variety of jobs, including production of CDs for local musicians. He charges for those, but he also produces audio products at cost for Coeur d’Alene High School’s music department, the Lake City Playhouse and the Junior Miss pageants in Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls and Bonners Ferry.

In addition to on-hold messages for a variety of firms in the United States, Canada and abroad, he voices commercials. One that’s currently playing nationally is for On-Site, a Hayden company which sells portable dry cleaning equipment.

Sibulsky’s industrial narrations include detailed directions on how to de-ice an F-27 aircraft for workers at locally owned Empire Airways.

However, about 60 percent of his business, he says, doesn’t involve his voice. He edits music that’s played for competitions and recitals by several dance studios, and produces sermons, radio shows and Bible studies for three local ministries. That involves editing, mixing sounds and duplicating the programs onto CDs or cassettes.

Among his other longtime customers are Coeur d’Alene’s Patrick and Gail McGaughey, who train business professionals in management, sales, marketing and personnel development.

“Steve’s helped us publish several books on CDs, including recording the introductions and endings.” Gail explains. “He’s very professional, a real perfectionist.”

Another local entrepreneur and author, Bradley Dugdale of the D.A. Davidson Co., says Sibulsky conducted a series of interviews to accompany “Let’s Save America – Nine Lessons to Financial Freedom,” his book on financial management.

“On my behalf, he recorded many inspirational and motivational speakers, including Patty Duke,” Dugdale says. “And thanks to his mastery of technology, some of those interviews he conducted over the phone, with people as distant as Guatemala.”

So, as you travel, pay attention to those on-hold messages and radio commercials. You might hear a voice from home.